I imagine my grampa had one too - but I imagine he was a lot older than yours, he was drafted when he was under age in the final struggle.
How old was your grampa?
That book looks well read and old, probably in the family for generations...

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

(30-01-2013 05:01 PM)Dom Wrote: I imagine my grampa had one too - but I imagine he was a lot older than yours, he was drafted when he was under age in the final struggle.
How old was your grampa?
That book looks well read and old, probably in the family for generations...

(30-01-2013 04:50 PM)Vosur Wrote: While I was looking through grandpa's old stuff a couple of days ago, I made a rather ... interesting ... discovery.

In case you don't know the cover, that's Hitler's Mein Kampf.

That can't be right.

The Swastika's not tilted

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

Even the damn Nazis can't be consistent with their own damn emblem! I could excuse their inconsistency by not killing crippled and gay party members, but I will not excuse this! Not having a consistent emblem is over the line!

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

(30-01-2013 05:01 PM)Dom Wrote: I imagine my grampa had one too - but I imagine he was a lot older than yours, he was drafted when he was under age in the final struggle.
How old was your grampa?
That book looks well read and old, probably in the family for generations...

My grandpa died at age 84 in 2001.

Ok, I don't know where my head was when I wrote this. Apparently on cloud 7.
It was my dad who was drafted at the end of the war as young kid (I think he was 16 or so), and gramps (mom's dad) was drafted too, but he was 45 or thereabouts. He passed in the nineties and was 92 I think. Don't check my math, lol! I am not sure of the ages.
When I grew up, war politics were not talked about to us kids. Just like my parents kept their atheism in the closet, they kept the war closeted. I did hear a lot of first hand accounts of those times from relatives, but never did anyone mention political affiliations. What I did hear was mostly stories about difficult survival. All I know is that in my life time my parents were liberal.
My dad and my gramps were always opposed in views, so I assume gramps had nazi affiliations. That side of the family was also fervently catholic.
Obviously there are many nazi skeletons in the closets of most german families. I saw in an old book that my gramps' brother was listed as a casualty during an asassination attempt on Hitler in Munich. It doesn't say though whether he was an innocent bystander or part of the nazi group there.
After having lived in the climate of nazi times and post war times, a lot of people just clammed up period. Anything you said could be used against you in those times, regardless of political orientation. First you couldn't say anything against the nazis out of fear, then you couldn't say anything for them. My mom said they used to turn off the lights, throw several blankets over themselves and the radio, and listen to radio free Europe. You could go to a concentration camp for that if anyone told on you.
It's hard to imagine the terror and fear most people lived under back then, it isn't even all that long ago.

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

My grandparents never had any problem talking about things, telling stories, and getting others to tell stories... it seemed to me that was a secure way to grow up. But strangely, my parents - my mom especially - didn't ever openly discuss things... it was almost like selective amnesia. Maybe it was that generation - that old, "loose lips sink ships" thing... mixed with a defined realization that the future is quite unknown.

***

I've read that more things about that time are finally being discussed openly in Germany and Europe - more so now than ever before. It's good. People need to get these recollections out in the open no matter how small or personal or bitter. I am one of those people who feel strongly that the only way to learn anything is to simply acknowledge it and that will start the ball rolling toward understanding. I also feel strongly that to just forget about something really horrible will never ever get rid of it.

There are finally German & European artists and film makers addressing time as well and specifically that war. A popular film - and one of my favorites - is called Black Book. It's a Dutch film about a somewhat local popular entertainer's exploits through the last year of the war and how no one knew what anyone was really about. Everything was such a scrambled mess; the person next to you could be a Nazi in full uniform, who may have just knowingly approved the papers for a truck load of resistant fighters to go an important check point. The conflict then becomes: what to do - kill him?

Imagine living with such an "unknown" when future lives may hang in the balance. It really is not difficult to see why the silence for so long ... I think so many of that generation were just shell shocked. Maybe now a few who are left can let some of it go.

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels. ~ Albert Einstein